Cheney
speech got Arlington Cemetery wrongThursday,
3 August 2000 19:28 (ET)August
3, 2000 -- Contrary to the emotional picture painted by Dick Cheney in
his speech at the Republican convention Tuesday night, there are no crosses
in Arlington National Cemetery.

In
accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, Cheney closed
his speech with a moving description of the helicopter ride he used to
take from Andrews Air Force Base to the Pentagon when he was Secretary
of Defense.

He
described the power of the various monuments of Washington in the order
the chopper passes them, ending with the famous military cemetery that
abuts the Pentagon.

"Just
before you settle down on the landing pad, you look upon Arlington National
Cemetery...its gentle slopes and crosses row on row," Cheney said. "I never
once made that trip without being reminded how enormously fortunate we
all are to be Americans, and what a terrible price thousands have paid
so that all of us...and millions more around the world...might live in
freedom."

But
Cheney's memory is slightly off. The graves in Arlington are marked with
white headstones, rounded at the top. According to the Veterans Administration
Web site, "Following World War I, a board of officers adopted a new design
to be used for all graves except those of veterans of the Civil and Spanish-American
Wars. This stone was of the slab design referred to as "General"
type, slightly rounded at the top, of American white marble, 42 inches
long, 13 inches wide and four inches thick. The inscription on the front
face would include the name of the soldier, his rank, regiment, division,
date of death and state from which he came."

The
stone can also be engraved with a small cross or a Star of David.

Lieutenant
Colonel Catherine Abbot, a Pentagon Public Affairs official, told United
Press International on Thursday, crosses are "not the standard there, but
I would not want to be the one who said there are no crosses."

Cheney
would appear to be confusing Arlington with Flanders Fields, a poem written
by John McCrea about the World War I battlefields of Northern France: "In
Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses row on row."

Nobody
in the Bush-Cheney campaign could offer immediate comment on this story.